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Synopsis of a new book on GIS for the

humanities:

AbstractMachine

HumanitiesGIS

ByCharlesB.Travis

Jennifer J. Lund

Presented at

New England Arc Users’ Conference

University of Massachusetts Amherst

May 11, 2015

Some number of years ago, a Wheaton faculty

member asked me to create a GIS map of events

in the career of a blind musician who toured the

Americas and Europe in the 19th Century.1 She

had been collecting news clippings about Blind

Tom for decades and wondered if mapping his

career might bring new insights. She had several

dozen bits of information but, spread out over

many years and many locations, the information

was very sparse.

I tried again recently, to map the travels of Mrs.

Wheaton for a history professor.2 We had an

order of magnitude more data points but, again, the information was too sparse and too varied,

and I didn’t know what to do with it.

After those two early attempts to map data for humanists, I was left wondering, “Why bother

to make a GIS with so few data points, or with data points that have so little in common?” After

reading this book, it seems there is a better question, “How do we get more data?” And I have

learned to call it evidence, not data, and to soften my definition of evidence.

1 Ann Sears, Professor of Music, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts.

2 Kathryn Tomasek, Associate Professor of History, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts.

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This book provides wonderful ideas for new ways to approach both problems: how to populate

the map with evidence, and what to do next. Charles Travis embraces the perspective that a

map is a text.3 Creating a map is analogous to the creative effort of writing a text, and using a

map is analogous to reading a book. When creating his maps, he includes many different kinds

of evidence, such as:

Evidence from and about the author, poet or artist:

Biographical information

Other works

Reviews and interpretations of his or her work

Allusions to his work by other artists or writers

Evidence from and about contemporary times:

News reports

Natural history

Contemporary biographies

Contemporary literature

Historical interpretations of the era

Travel brochures

Oral histories

Field work and observation

We’re going to get to examples

shortly, but first we need talk

about a mind-bending idea: we

need to talk about Post-

Structuralism. It’s easier for me to

talk about what it isn’t instead of

what it is. It’s not Positivism and

it’s not Reductionism.

What is Positivism?

Positivists focus on correct

answers. You are a positivist if you

focus on objective evidence and

repeatable observations. A

positivist might look at James

Joyce’s novel and note that the O’Connell Bridge is mentioned (I’m making this up) six times.

A non-positivist might be more interested in the symbolism of the bridge in the novel: is it a sad

or a happy place? Does it imply doom or joy? Beer is nice. Dead rats are not. (The protagonist

thinks about both while standing on the bridge.) A typical humanist will focus on non-positivist

interpretations. When supporting humanist GIS it seems I’ll need to embrace interpretations

and other non-factual evidence. And I’ll need to find ways to geocode those interpretations and

include them in attribute tables.

3 Chapter 2, Toward the spatial turn, p 16.

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What is Reductionism?

When I was mapping the performances of Blind Tom, the 19th

century musician, I added a layer

of census data to display racial density by state. I used 5 classes and created a choropleth map

with 5 shades of blue. I was practicing reductionism, as had the census takers. We reduced the

lives and identities of millions of individuals down to one number per state, to represent that

state’s population of African-Americans at that time. I did that because I imagined that single

number might shed light on Blind Tom’s experience as he traveled around the US.

This is reductionism, and humanists don’t usually do this. Trying to think like a humanist now, I

realize that state level data was far less relevant to Blind Tom’s experience than any scrap of

evidence that might be gleaned from a newspaper clipping, like whether the clipping came

from the social pages or an advertisement.

What is open knowledge?

Once I accepted the goal of mapping non-positivist evidence, I was ready to start mapping

interpretations. I’m accepting that two people can have different and equally valid

interpretations, and that’s not a problem; that’s a goal. When Travis creates his GIS maps, he

hopes to catalyze additional interpretations. His goal is not to summarize knowledge, but to

open opportunities for the creation of more knowledge. From his perspective, the best use of a

GIS virtual world is to pose new questions and allow additional exploration.4

When I’m dealing with census data, I’m usually hoping to unearth some simple new truth.

Conversely, Travis wants to simplify access, but he does not want to simplify the virtual world

he is exploring. Typically, my insights have emerged from simplification; his insights emerge

from the added richness and complexity of his virtual world. My mapping pursued summaries;

his mapping pursues new ideas. He is questing for open knowledge.

An FYI to GIS support people: Travis delivers multiple warnings about the dangers of

hobnobbing with scientific, technical types. He tells his humanist colleagues not to be seduced

by the siren call of reductionism and positivism. Travis also warns about technologists’ well-

meaning efforts to deliver completed GIS projects. His own methods of inquiry require open-

ended environments for exploration in which he can continue to search for new insights and

connections. He fears that if his GIS map were designed, built and delivered as a fixed and final

product, it would curtail his exploration, limiting him to investigating only questions he raised

before the map existed.5

That’s enough vocabulary. Let’s move on to the practices.

4 Chapter 8, The terra incognitae of humanities GIS, p 122.

5 Ibid.

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Overlaying Narratives One important technique is layering stories. James Joyce’s novel Ulysses recounts one day in

the life of the main character. (It’s a very busy day with a lot of flashbacks.) Travis did the

following to build the map in his Figure 5.1, below, which he describes in Chapter 5.6

Step 1: Starting with a contemporary map of Dublin, he mapped the travels of the main

character, Leopold Bloom.

Step 2: He took the episodes from the Ulysses’ Odyssey (Homer’s epic poem) and color-coded

them.

Step 3: He color coded Bloom’s progress through his day, to correspond to the episodes in the

Odyssey.

6 Chapter 5, Modeling and visualizing in GIS: The topological influences of Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s

Inferno on James Joyces’ Ulysses (1922).

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Overlaying Systems of Meaning In addition to layering stories and drawing parallels between them, Travis used GIS to label the

symbolic systems at work within the novel, labeling events with their appropriate symbolism. In

Chapter 5 he described how he connected events in James Joyce’s novel with events in Homer’s

epic poem. He also connected events in James Joyce’s novel to Dante’s layers of hell. The layers

of hell are a spatial model that Dante created to structure his long cycle of many poems. The

symbolism of the layers of hell has taken on a life of its own; I’m sure you intuit the meaning

even if you aren’t familiar with the poems. James Joyce uses the layers of hell to express how

Bloom’s despair deepens as the day goes by, and Travis represents that psychogeography by

mapping elevation.

In Chapter 6, Travis uses GIS to connect the events in a different novel to a different symbolic

system.7 This system describes levels of social maturity, and he applies it to the main

character’s choices and actions throughout the novel. At some points in the novel, the character’s

decisions seem to be governed by accountability to God; at other points decisions seem to be

governed by the laws of man; still others seem chaotic. In his Figure 6.3, below, Travis represents

this psychogeography on the z-axis as different bands of color.

7 Chapter 6, Psychogeographical GIS: Creating a “kaleidoscope equipped with consciousness.” Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-

Birds (1939), using Viconian Ages to assign social maturity.

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To create this map he did the following:

Step 1: Mapped the character’s movement around Dublin, labeling important locations.

Step 2: Assigned a level of maturity to various events

Step 3: Used ArcScene 3-D Analyst to display the character’s activities in the vertical dimension.

Labeling Legends

In Chapter 6, Travis also describes how he annotated significant locations on his map with

passages from the novel. These annotations in the lower right corner of Figure 6.3 support his

interpretations of the characters’ levels of social maturity. He also noted parallels with popular

symbols and legends, like cowboys. This is an important technique, using literary shorthand to

convey meaning to readers. When you think of “cowboy”, you don’t think, “A man who herds

cows.” The term summons an entire package of meaning for the reader: daring, carefree,

careless, etc. Travis includes these symbolic references in an attribute table.

Deep Mapping Before we leave this map, we should appreciate an important goal of the mapmaker. In addition

to serving as an environment to explore the novel, Travis created this map to serve as a vivid

description of Dublin at a particularly vibrant moment in its history. With his richly annotated

map, he repurposed fictional descriptions and events to create an evocative snapshot of what

Dublin was like shortly after gaining independence from Britain. He created an interactive

window into Dublin’s social history, a tool to enable new insights and creative translations

Travis calls this type of analysis Deep Mapping8. When performing Deep Mapping, he examines

a particular location, calling on multiple sources. He creates a collage of moments and

meanings associated with that location. The technique involves all manner of investigation.

Here is a list of comparisons and explorations to suggest the breadth of possibilities:

What can be mapped?

• Past and present

• Qualitative, quantitative

• Political, social, poetic

• Experiences, feelings and interpretations

• Material world, natural world, symbolic

world, fictional world

• Seasonal cycles

What can be done with the (similar or

dissimilar!) elements in the map?

• Assembling and parsing

• Fusing

• Boundary crossing

• Interpreting

• Juxtaposing

For example, a deep mapping of the O’Connell Bridge in Dublin might include photographs,

news reports, historical poetry and a timeline. We might include these elements in fields of

various attribute tables. For the novel Ulysses, one attribute table might collect all the

paragraphs in which Bloom stood on that bridge, with annotations about the range of feelings

he experienced. Another attribute table might collect news about what that happened on that

bridge throughout history. Another might collect relevant passages from other literary works.

Our humanist scholar would then have convenient access to a compendium of diverse

observations and reflections about that location, possibly sparking new insights into the

literature, the author, the culture, or something else entirely.

8 Chapter 2, Toward the spatial turn, pp 17-18.

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Deterritorializing Space Travis applies another technique he calls de-territorializing, described in Chapter 4.

9 He studied

the poet Patrick Kavanagh and how his writing changed over time. Travis mapped the poet’s

daily meanderings and noted significant differences between his early rural life and his later

years in Dublin.

The upper map in his Figure 4.2, see below, shows that in his rural period Kavanagh’s activities

were centered around his home. Throughout the day, the poet-farmer went back and forth

from the house, to the field, back to the house, to a different field, etc. Later Kavanagh moved

to Dublin, and his life in the city was different, characterized by a daily circuit. He left home in

the morning, visited various locations around Dublin for meals, errands and networking, and

then he returned home to sleep. Travis noted this change in how the poet moved through

space. He used the GIS map to illustrate patterns of movement through space, differentiating

between a home-centric pattern and a daily circuit that de-emphasized the home. Studying

Kavanagh’s poetry, Travis found reflections of this difference in the poet’s use of language,

which contributed to a new understanding of the poet’s work.

9 Chapter 4, GIS and the Poetic Eye.

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Biospatial Timeline

A final technique is “biospatial” GIS. In Chapter 7 Travis describes how he represented the life and works

of a British playwright. 10

Travis created a timeline of Samuel Beckett’s life and literary accomplishments,

and linked the various events to a map. In his Figure 7.6, see below, a GIS map of Dublin displays the

O’Connell Bridge. When a reader clicks on the bridge in the map, the reader is taken to Becket’s poem

about the bridge. The map also links to a biographical timeline showing how the poem fits into the

sequence of Becket’s life and works.

In Summary Here is a summary of practices taken from Travis’ examples, with some new mantras I’ll adopt in

my future conversations with humanists:

• Evidence can come from anywhere. I will have an open mind about evidence I might have

dismissed as trivial or irrelevant before I read this book.

• Overlay narratives. The experience of one person or fictional character can illuminate

the experiences of others. There are some stories, like folk legends, that reappear in

many cultures and many settings. Correlating characters and prototypes can enrich the

analysis and exploration.

• Overlay systems of meaning. Authors and artists use cultural references as shorthand, to

summon big, complicated ideas with just a few words. Joyce used Dante’s levels of hell. I

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Chapter 7, Geovisualizing Beckett.

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could imagine using family structure (patriarchy or matriarchy), or Freud’s stages of

maturity. Travis found it useful to layer these symbolic references above a geographical

map, to visualize correlations.

• Do deep mapping, focusing on one location while using many types of evidence, from

many sources, both fictional and non-fictional.

• De-territorialize space. Travis found it revealing to identify spatial patterns like loops and

trails. He found significance in the patterns themselves, apart from the characters’

geographic locations

Finally, here is a statement of

values that might assist me as I try

to make better maps for

humanist.11

• Celebrate incomplete maps.

Leave room for interpretation and

creating of new insights

• “Better” research means the

map is more: Qualitative, Lyrical,

Artistic, Esoteric and Experiential.

These are all new ways for me to

engage with maps, with evidence

and with the people I’m

supporting.

All images used with permission of the author and the publisher.

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Chapter 2, Toward the spatial turn, p 19.